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I'm a writer, living in Bristol in the UK. I've had a handful of short stories published but I'm still working on that Holy Grail for fiction writers- securing a literary agent. So, if you're an agent or have an Auntie, Uncle, second cousin, best friend who is one...

There’s a man mowing his lawn, stooped back turned towards me, grey head down as he follows the straight line in the grass. His cardigan flaps in the breeze, the colour of gunmetal. He could almost be my dad, bent under the weight of geometric lawns, pub and pint Saturdays, roast beef Sundays, back to work Mondays.

The bus passes on and leaves the man behind and I begin my search for other colours.

Written for the FFfAW Challenge. See the pic and write a tale, share, read and comment. See here to join in the fun.

The image of green and grey through a gloomy window reminded me of one of my favourite New Model Army songs, Green and Grey. The song is all about someone who escapes a small town life … and the people they leave behind.

Lovely description and then this – “He could almost be my dad, bent under the weight of geometric lawns, pub and pint Saturdays, roast beef Sundays, back to work Mondays.” As simply as that you tell that the viewer is very different, and rejects the identikit model of middle class life to which their parents subscribed so fervently. And now they are on their way to find other colours. Well written, Lynn!

Misted, dust-dulled, gun-metal, grey— almost an absence of colour, of life even, despite the grass. You’ve captured exactly the sort of reverie one went into on bus journeys, pre-internet, when one had run out of things to read or say and were entering a stream-of-consciousness mood, drifting from one fog of related thoughts to another. Been there, done that, now I’ve read the flash fiction!

I actually used to enjoy that on long bus journeys, staring out of the window day dreaming. Used to do it a lot as a teenager, crossing from Derbyshire to London to see my dad. Thank you, Chris. Glad you could identify

I felt a bit cruel about suburbia after I’d written it – I don’t despise it at all really. We all make our lives where we can and I rather enjoy what to others would seem a humdrum routine. Thank you Crispina

And what a lovely ‘excuse’ that is! I’ve mainly lived in cities or small towns, apart from a short stint in Suffolk with my dad. He owned a 17th century thatched cottage and though he was on a busy-ish road, there was little surrounding us other than wheat fields and deer. I don’t think it suited me. Much as I’d like more quiet in my life, I also like to be within walking distance of a cafe and a museum! 🙂

That’s one (major) advantage of where I live now. Short walk to doctors surgesry, to dentist, to library (groan, it’s not well stocked), to 3 major supermarkets plus two more, to high street shops, to buses, to trains, to the beach, though I seldom go, to Breydon Water and the wetlands, to historic monuments suffiecient tyo occupy an idle day, to two Roman forts (yay!) and ….. sufficient to keep me happy (oh, forgot the nightspots, but they don’t appeal these days) and restuarants serving food from around the world, owned and staffed by peoples from around the world. Yet it’s only a small town; five minutes walk and I’m deep in mud.

You remember rightly. Lots of pros, lots of cons, but it has become my home (though I still return at least twice a year to the village of my youth. On the outsikrts of Norwich, it has what Yarmouth has not: Woods, trees, bluebells, ramsons, snowdrops, hills, paddling streams–and a neolithic henge which has yet to be excavated. Oh, and don’t forget the remains of an Eliizabethan hall, which isn’t as big as it was when I was a kid, and neither as assessible.

What a lovely mix of places to visit and environments to enjoy. We go weeks only seeing the city, with all its sights and very many sounds – often unpleasant ones! Lovely to get away every once in a while. What I’d really like is to go somewhere very, very quiet for a short time – by a lake, by a deserted, wintry beach. Ah, the quiet. Sadly, I don’t think the fourteen year old in the house would be up for that. One day, I’ll escape 🙂

While weather holds I go ‘into the wilds’ once a week. Sometimes that takes one bus, sometimes two. Sometimes I walk from one bus route to another, which forces me to keep on walking. I plan the routes to avoid busy roads. Yellow roads, and brown roads if I must road-walk, but best are green lanes. Sometimes a tractor will trug away in the distance. Sometimes it will chase me down a lane! But generaly, at most a distant hum, and the birds.
Although I take the camera, and usually return to 100-plus photos, it’s the walk, and the greenery, and the quiet I go for.

Sounds lovely! That yomping about the countryside, watching nature change over the seasons. Such a lot to see that you would miss if you weren’t out in the elements. Nice to avoid those busy roads too!

Fly agaric are extraordinary looking things, though I’ve never seen one in the flesh. I did watch a documentary once that claimed fungi have more in common with animals than with plants … Makes those things even more odd, I’d suggest! Good luck for improved weather later this week.

Yes! And horticulturalists are becoming obsessed with it as they’ve found these fine, white, fungal connections are essential to root development and growth – forget fertiliser, reach for fungi! Astonishingly weird and complex organisms